Kilburn, Peter (1924–1986)

Peter Kilburn, a librarian at the American University in Beirut, is believed to have been the first American hostage to be executed during the Lebanon hostage crisis.

Kilburn, who had worked for the American University library for more than 20 years, was reported missing after he failed to show up for work on December 3, 1984. He was last seen alive on November 30, 1984. Unlike most hostage takings, no group claimed responsibility for Kilburn's disappearance. During the 16 months Kilburn was missing, his name was notably absent from the various videos, letters, and messages sent by American hostages to their families and the U.S. government.

Little is known about the conditions in which Kilburn was held or how he was abducted. Some have suggested that Kilburn was kidnapped because he hired a Christian over two Shiites for a library position at the university. Later CIA intelligence indicates that thugs more interested in money than political causes abducted Kilburn and that he was to be “sold” to the highest bidder.

In the summer of 1985, a Canadian of Armenian descent who claimed to be a representative of the group holding Kilburn claimed that Kilburn's freedom could be purchased for $500,000. That figure later jumped to $3 million once the Canadian offered proof—Kilburn's American University identification card. By March 1986, the CIA and FBI had planned an elaborate sting operation in which the kidnappers were to be paid with chemically treated bills that would dissolve a few days after the swap. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire, supplied the $100,000 to be paid to the Canadian intermediary, and the altered money was delivered to Europe. However, in the midst of these transactions, a Libyan intelligence agent in Lebanon paid to have Kilburn murdered, based on rumors that the United States was planning a military strike against Libya's Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi for his role in the La Belle discotheque bombing in West Berlin.

On April 17, 1986, two days after the United States bombed Libya, the bodies of Kilburn and two British schoolteachers, John Leigh Douglas, and Philip Padfield, were found in the hills of eastern Beirut. They had been shot in the back of the head. Farid Fleihan, Kilburn's longtime friend and physician at American University hospital, identified Kilburn's body in Beirut. A later autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital revealed no signs of torture or mistreatment.

The Arab Fedayeen Cells (aka Arab Revolutionary Cells), a pro-Libyan group of Palestinians affiliated with the terrorist Abu Nidal, claimed responsibility for these deaths. A note found with the bodies described the men as “two British intelligence agents” and a “CIA agent” who were killed in response to the U.S. air strikes against Libya and Britain's cooperation in that action.

Kilburn's body was returned to the United States on April 20, 1986, and buried later that month in the Army cemetery in San Francisco's Presidio. Six years later, the United States offered up to $2 million for aid in capturing the individuals involved in Kilburn's death, as well as the deaths of Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley and U.S. Col. Walter Higgins.